Meatbags casual roman diary

After a few rounds meandering around, I am still yet to find a roman guide that I would consider great. There is the economic powerhouse that most people will find and it is very useful. However I found this a bit too defensive and suited mostly for slow servers. (not sure on the original author to reference it) The first full server I played was as a roman. I followed this guide here http://archive.forum.travian.com.au/...ead.php?t=2558 on the first round of Australian speed. It is written very poorly. I’m not a fan of it these days at all but it gives a rough run down and I will follow a similar path.

My roman start is far from perfect and has a lot to improve on, so am writing this a bit of a diary of what I did. If you have 5 duals, are active 24/7 and love raiding with every spare minute of your day, this guide is not for you. I have been down that path too much lately and my two duals and I all wanted a lot more time for more important things in life... Like spamming the skype chat. This should be easily followed by most players of any skill level, you will need the basic understanding of the game though. The goal of our account was to be completely laid back in everything we did. If we were getting farmed, no one was going to stay awake late at night to spend down. If we wanted to go spend a weekend away, there was no pressure to be checking via the phone every hour. There was no pressure to be actively raiding at all or to even stress out over troop ques for the first few weeks. Put it simply, we were a very experienced bunch (top 3 robbers from the previous server), but couldn’t be bothered with a hyperactive account.

This is all based on a speed server. It should be workable on a slow server, however you will need to triple any time lines and I would definitely have made EI’s much earlier. I am yet to complete a slow server so cannot comment much further.

We had a basic plan to go by. However no server is ever the same and it’s important to always be flexible enough to change your tactics depending on the situation you find yourself in.

Our plan was:

Start a day late.

Because roman troops are a little more expensive and we didn’t want to waste time raiding, we will continue on until we have finished the quests. We'll keep on simming even after that and make level 3 fields.

At that point we will make a barracks and start pumping out legionnaires. We were undecided what level we will get it up to. The main point when upgrading your barracks is you never upgrade it unless you can keep it qued 24/7. So if the que gets over an hour we will upgrade it if not, the barracks is built high enough for now. We'll be aiming for around 40 - 50 legs then start simming more fields.

Once we have level 6 - 7 fields we’ll work on settling v2.

If I was playing a more dedicated account I would think about researching EI's earlier and start clearing out pesky teutons in our area. For our purpose though I think we will hold off until v2.

At that point it’s sim sim sim. V2 will be a cropper and will be our future capital. So everything in that village will be put straight into fields. In the spawn I'll look at getting a party started and researching EI's.

Day one

W started 15hrs late. We didn’t want to be competing for farms in the dead centre, or have to put up with people trying to farm us every 10 minutes. Starting at this time got us out to around the 50ish co ordinates. We followed the quests from the start and took the economic route. As a Teuton or Gaul I stop quests once it says 'get all your fields to level 2' and pump everything into troops to get the raiding rush once BP is over.

Once we had a marketplace, we always had a 2:1 offer out on the marketplace. All the hyperactive robbing teutons are begging for wood and everyone has excess iron and crop that will be close to overflowing. If you offer 200 wood in return for 400 iron or crop, it won't take long before its snapped up on the market giving you a tidy little profit. Clay is also in higher demand for the simmer style players.

It was at this point I found two good experianced duals to help out. None of us want to be over competitive 24/7, but do want to have a bit of fun so it should work well. All of us are Aussies, but we all do shift work which puts us pretty close to around the clock coverage if needed. If not, who cares?

We have our embassy built, trying to find some n00b alliance to invite us to finish the tasks off then leave it, or give some friends a few tips on good farms for a day or two. I'm not sure this last quest actually pays itself off with res, but at least the embassy gives good cp to help us on our way to V2.

All our fields are level 2 and six are at level 3. I changed my mind early this morning and decided to make a few troops ready for the end of BP rush. We should have 4 -5 legs by the time our 7x7 is out of BP.

I looked at our 7x7 and opened up every village in a new tab. Any gaul over 9 pop (minimum pop needed to make troops) I closed the tab for. Anyone that looked semi decent or could have troops I closed. The rest I wrote down in our dual chat a link to their profile and the time they come out of BP. I listed these in order to make it easier to look through. What I want to do is make sure that we are the first person to attack them the second they leave beginers protection. This will give you the best opportunity to get a decent bounty. Most Teutons will have 30 – 40 clubs running around by the time BP ends and will have up to 300 a day later. Trying to compete micro raiding against these will be pointless unless you are truly dedicated. You’re only hope is to get that first big hit in.

Anyone under 9 pop cannot possibly have troops so they are safe to hit. Beware of 9 pop and especially 15 pop teutons. These players usually ignored the quests altogether and just made a barracks and troops to raid with straight away. 15 pop players will have a market and a cranny to get a better start. Try to avoid them for now unless they dont grow over the next day or so.

A good way to choose which players are O.K. to attack is to look up their stats. If they have offence points, they have made troops at some point and are activly raiding. Leave these guys alone unless their off score doesn't increase. If they have defence points it means one of two things. They had their troops caught at home and are now a productive farm, or they have made defence (either their own or D bunnies) Make a judgement call on these guys. I tend to just go by a gut feeling. Win some lose some.

Anyone that has ascii art you must attack out of principle. Even if it means you lose every troop you have, attack! Attack! ATTAAAAAAAACK!!!! Research cats asap and continually zero pop them. They are the scum of the earth. If you don’t cata the bejebus out of them as soon as feasible, travian will cease to exist as an online game and your family pet will suffer a painful disease.

DAY TWO

BP has finished.

The moment we were out of bp, we had three incomings. One from the guy literally touching us five minutes away by legionnaire We had to upgrade the cranny to level 3 to make it easier to spend down. Out of our 7x7 we got a few good bounties. With only 5 - 10 troops though it was hard to clear them out before someone else had pitched in.

We spent our res about 50:50 on leggs and resource fields. Around half our fields are now level 4, the others at level 3. We upgraded the market to level 2 to help make more profitable trades, as well as helping us send res to a friend when we cant spend down for an incoming. We have 30 leggs which is right on target for where we wanted to be. So far we haven't really needed to upgrade the barracks past level one. That is still plenty fast enough unless we were to stop simming fields.

We made it into some small crappy alliance to finish the quests. A few have already asked us for defence or res. Ignore ignore ignore. At this point, all your res are precious and you can't afford to waste it on some clueless fool who will delete within a week. Defence wise, unless the alliance is pitching in together to make a decent wall, is a waste. My 30 legs are considered hero xp for a teut right now and defending with them would be pointless. Aslo they are providing us with our incoming through raiding. Until the cats are let out of the bag, don't waste any troops defending.

DAY THREE

Another day down.

Same old stuff, not much excting. Gauls areound us are starting to get TT's and one person has made EI's. If we were going for cavalry it looks like we would be able to get them very quickly. Im just not convinced they are quite worth it for our laid back style just yet.

Currently we have mostly level 5 fields. Around 80 leggs are running around giving us a nice boost in income. At this point you should be raiding everyone in your 21x 21 except the high pop gauls and any aggressive teutons. Easiest way to do it, is open up your 7x7, send a raid to everyone. Then open up the 7x7 to your north, send a raid to everyone. Open up the 7x7 to your North East; send a raid to all of them. I work my way in a spiral until I have run out of troops or care factor. Later on in the game, I find it easier to do this by opening up 13x13s instead. You can cover a large area quicker this way. Keep an eye out for people just leaving BP. Whenever you have spare time, you should be covering as much area as possible looking for people in BP in a similar way I described finding new farms. Write these down somewhere in order of when they come out. These have been our best source of income. Occasionally we got a 2k bounty. The rest we are scavenging for 100, 200 bounties if lucky. Soon we will be scavenging for 20 – 30 res per raid.

We found a few friendlies nearby. One gaul that rushed to TT's. Any teuton that raids us we let them know asap. They are more than happy and eager to follow them home. Just remember TTs are only really effective against clubs. They won't go hunting down romans for you, or killing gauls. Any teuts with a D bunny are beyond their reach just yet. They are only interested in bunches of 30 - 40 mace. You can't expect them to do everything for you just yet. By clearing out the mediocre teutons though it helps our area be more profitable with raiding.

We had a gap in coverage overnight. Had quite a few resources robbed off us, around 3 – 4000 I think. Nothing to worry about. We didn't lose any of our troops which is all that matters.

DAY FOUR AND FIVE

Day 4 and 5 have been much of the same.

I was on shift change yesterday and fell asleep (passed out in a drunken haze) before writing down my usual brutal updates. So you're getting two days in one here.

We copped quite a few raids and it was getting harder to spend down. We finished off the cranny to level 10. Hurt me deep. One of the golden rules for early game is to never waste resources on things that dont make you more resources. Building pretty buildings for the sake of it is what slows you down and puts you behind the pack. Troops and res tiles are all you want to be making. Both will increase your resource income and help you grow faster than others. I see a lot of people teching to praets, upgrading the MB, wasting res on unneeded storage and wonder why they aren't keeping up. Make do with the bare minimum! That being said, if you are playing solo I suppose you can make a second cranny... Just put it off as long as you can.

We are almost finished level 7 fields. We have around 100 - 150 legs running around still with some decent bounties available. A few people have now settled v2 and there is a lot of cavalry starting to make appearances. We are currently ranked 120ish for pop.

The roman next door started to agitate me. Raided us a few times, occasionally trying every 10 minutes. I sent him a message explaining that I was the almighty Meatbag and he shall bow down in fear. He responded that he did not know me, so I knew he was a complete n00b. I found him defending once, decided he was offline and cleared him out. We lost 20 legs in the process, but it was worth eliminating that threat. He has given off some nice res as well which ended up paying for our losses. Still remember legs are pretty pathetic attackers and are slow and expensive. Its still far too early to be throwing them at walls of phailanx. Just keep using them to raid people. Keep expanding the area you are farming. Start looking at raiding people in the area just outside your 21x21. We are hitting people 14 squares away in each direction. Still avoiding gauls and any decent looking Teut. I still look further out into the boonies for people coming out of BP. They are by far the best source of income.

Our income is looking pretty steady, 950 of each res per hour. At this rate we can save for settlers in under a day. ~5hrs each. I built a lvl 1 residance to find out how we are doing for culture points. We need 48hrs before we will have enough cp to settle. I thought about throwing a party and settling earlier and am leaning towards it. Its probably the way to go at this point. The earlier we can settle, the better our choice of croppers. Hmmm... If only I had enough time now to save for a party.

DAY SIX

We ended up not throwing a party, I fell asleep (sober this time). It might have paid off, if we were more active I probably would have opted for it. Instead we spent another day simming fields and getting ready.

All our fields are now up to lvl 7 with one of each at lvl 8. We finished the residance off and worked out we will have cp to settle in under 24hrs. I we had to up the storage to be able to train a settler. I always stick with the bare minimum when possible. A lvl 8 warehouse and lvl 7 granary is al that is needed. Now its time to start saving for settlers.

I have used the gold club feature to get an idea of what cropper to go for. I am currently throwing ideas around with the other duals. Usually I wouldn't care if there was a lot of people around our cropper. A bit of competition is what makes the game fun. Since we are far from a hyperactive account we are thinking of moving to an area where people are only just spawning. We will not go past 100,100. That is just hopeless boonie simming. Instead we will just find the best cropper we can away from any strong competition.

If you were looking at settling in a bit more of an aggresive position, say within 20 squares of the centre. Make sure you do have a good look at the players in your 13x13 at least. I have seen people settle right next door to a top robbing teuton and being catapulted the moment they settled. I myself almost launched on a cropper only 5 squares away from a hyperactive teuton. You can guarantee you won’t last long there. Don't lose precious time trying.

Village Two!

We saved for the settlers very quickly. I have memories of earlier rounds saving for 12 hrs per settler. Almost two days of nonstop saving and hoping you don’t get raided. With our brutal simming combined with some basic raiding, we were able to save for settlers in under 4hrs each. We had one raid while saving for settler #3. We were able to spend the resources on another res tile and still saved for the last settler without delays. We only managed to secure a 100% cropper despite being in the first twenty to settle and the second roman to settle. For this reason I would probably recommend throwing a party earlier. Even if you just build the infrastructure required, the buildings may generate enough CP to settle much quicker. Round two and three I played as Gaul and we threw a party each time. I worked out that we could have settled without the party at the same time. This was probably the main reason I decided not to pursue it as much this time around.

By the time our second village had settled, we were ranked in the top 40. We were robbing around 20 – 30% of what top robbers were raiding. We started partying in the spawn straight away then researched EI’s. A day or two later and we were in the top 20 for pop. We had about 150 leggos running around, however we were starting to run into more and more defenses and losing troops to residences. Being so expensive for an inefficient raider, we were probably losing more than we were gaining. It was still good to have them though.

I planned on writing a diary for our entire round. I may still do so but I missed a fair bit that wouldn’t be quite as accurate. This however I believe will get your average Joe off to a good start and on your way to a top account. Remember this very much a sim city style beginning. Once you have that cropper you need to start pumping troops out. We spent the next few days pouring as much as we possibly could into EI’s while sending the odd shipment to the cropper to get it started.

You can go either way from here. All out offence mixed, D bunny, sim city pop queen. You should be in a good position to do whatever you want.

This is all based on a speed server. It should be workable on a slow server, however you will need to triple any time lines and I would definitely have made EIís much earlier. I am yet to complete a slow server so cannot comment much further.

He did.

Originally Posted by rokchick

Bennyboy because I want to know if he really does wear tartan pants like in my imagination.

We had a gap in coverage overnight. Had quite a few resources robbed off us, around 3 – 4000 I think. Nothing to worry about. We didn't lose any of our troops which is all that matters.

........

We finished off the cranny to level 10. Hurt me deep. One of the golden rules for early game is to never waste resources on things that dont make you more resources.

Hmmm - is there a certain oblivious irony here? Surely one of the blessings of a cranny is that (at negligible cost) it DOES make you resources - or at least prevents you from losing them, which is virtually the same thing.

Originally Posted by meatbag

Building pretty buildings for the sake of it is what slows you down and puts you behind the pack. Troops and res tiles are all you want to be making. Both will increase your resource income and help you grow faster than others. I see a lot of people teching to praets, upgrading the MB, wasting res on unneeded storage and wonder why they aren't keeping up. Make do with the bare minimum! That being said, if you are playing solo I suppose you can make a second cranny... Just put it off as long as you can.

.......

We need 48hrs before we will have enough cp to settle. I thought about throwing a party and settling earlier and am leaning towards it. Its probably the way to go at this point. The earlier we can settle, the better our choice of croppers. Hmmm... If only I had enough time now to save for a party.

DAY SIX

We ended up not throwing a party, I fell asleep (sober this time). It might have paid off, if we were more active I probably would have opted for it. Instead we spent another day simming fields and getting ready.

All our fields are now up to lvl 7 with one of each at lvl 8. We finished the residance off and worked out we will have cp to settle in under 24hrs. ........

.... and there's the other big advantage of crannies - for negligible cost, they are the most cost-efficient CP-generators around; closely followed by the Main Building. If you're NOT going to throw parties early on, then I'd argue that crannies and MB upgrades are essential for getting your second-village CP in good time.